glass into a complex piece of lab equipment. “It’s sort of
like making ships in a bottle,” Wicker says.

44 She’s Got a Ticket to Ride

Little Bear—that’s the nickname of Ursula Gillespie
’97—can measure out her life in cars, from the ’ 67
Oldsmobile Cutlass she remembers her father racing to
a ’97 Camaro that sits under a blue tarp, waiting to be
rebuilt. She and her family are part of a vast concrete
track congregation that gathers on weekends at drag
strips throughout North Carolina, but Gillespie isn’t
there as a spectator. She’s “chasing money,” going after
purses up to 10,000 as she roars down the drag strip.